The laws of life are harsh. Fail to respect them and you die. Why should we expect the world of mankind to not be subject to those same laws?
One useful "spinoff" of new sciences and technologies is they provide new metaphors and analogies we can use to conceptualize aspects of our lives and our world.
Some of the most venerable, enduring and credible of such metaphors come from biology.
For example, no life form can exist without a skin. This seems so obvious. Yet an "organism" as complex as a nation-- the level beyond a single organism-- is treated, by simple minded globalists, as though it can survive without a skin, particularly an "econo-legal" skin. This confronts the laws of life.
Skins are membranes. Membranes do not have to be living things. Membranes allow some compounds and components to pass through them and it blocks some. Membranes have a kind of intelligence. It makes sense that healthy, life affirming, growth enhancing policies should be based upon membraneous metaphors and models. I've written about this at greater length, here about four years ago.
Another biological law-- an immutable fact of nature, and really a collection of related laws-- is that biological organisms live in an interconnected, interdependent world. Interdependent. That's a word that conservatives don't like. This collection of laws also requires that biological organisms NOT be left alone. Leave organisms alone and they fail to reproduce and die. Not exactly a concept that fits with libertarian "leave me alone" philosophy.
Then, there are these things in nature called regulatory processes. Oh yes. Life does not persist without very firm, constant regulations. And the more advanced, the higher the life form, the more the regulatory processes. Take warm blooded creatures-- birds and mammals. They require thermal regulation. Take blood chemistry. You don't want that to go off kilter, or you die. The science of biotechnology is, in many ways, the science of exploring and understanding regulatory processes. Even the massive, exciting genome processes, cloning, stem-cells-- all of these involve understanding the regulatory processes. When we learn how the regulatory process by which a stem cell works, we can control it so it does healing things.
When regulatory processes go wrong, or stop operating, things go badly-- illness, cancer, death. Regulations. Conservatives and libertarians profess to not liking them. But really, corporations just don't like certain kinds of regulations. They do like regulations that protect them from litigation, that spell out ways that they are allowed to operate with impunity. They just don't like regulations that restrain them, that hold them back from doing things that they want to do.
Cancer drugs, chemotherap and radiation therapy work that way too. They block tumors from growing without any restraint, without any consideration for the effects they are having upon the body. A world without regulations is, if you believe that the world of living recapitulates the world of life, an impossibility. Regulations are necessary to keep vital balances, to make sure that unhealthy, deadly extremes of growth, of a multiplicity of imbalances do not occur.
Nature allows variations. The diversity of forms of life attest to this. Even within a single species, nature allows flexibility-- and the variety of shapes and sizes and colors and the diversity of characteristics of humans attest to this. Biological regulations allow some range of variation. That's why blood tests show acceptable and unacceptable ranges for cholesterol, sugar, etc.
The idea that a nation, an economy can function without regulations is actually very popular. This is the basic concept of the Milton Friedman, University of Chicago School of Economics. Billions of dollars have been expended based upon this hokum. Millions of lives have had this silly, stupid theory inflicted upon them. Tens of thousand of victims have died because of these crackpot, nature-contradicting ideas.
One libertarian perspective that laws of nature DO support is the right to be left alone. Put too many inhabitants in a small space and they go crazy or get sick. Try to impose the laws of one organism upon a different organism and it can kill it. Just try watering a cactus with the amount of water an Amazon rain forest plant needs.
The laws of nature could be seen as "god-given." It seems to me that bible-toting evangelicals might look to the laws of life as a source of teachings, and that they would reject theories and political approaches that fly in the face and contradict nature's laws.
Another law of life is that in an ecosystem predators and prey must maintain a balance. When a predator ravages a land so that most of the prey are gone, the predators will die off. Or if one bio-element of the ecosystem uses up an extreme amount of resources, the ecosystem will adapt, with parts dying, or with changes in which life forms live, which die and which thrive. Consider the transplantation of the Kudzu plant in the southern US, where forests have been replaced by the invasive vines.
The same is true when you drain resources from a nation. Take enough and pull them out of the country, throw them away on weapons and maintaining troops in a foreign nation and you starve the homeland, you fail to maintain the infrastructure, fail to nurture healthy growth. Things begin to fall apart. Weeds begin to take root where healthy maintenance of lanscaping had been the norm. Rare, exotic but useless flora begin to bloom-- stinkweed, fungi, poison ivy, thorny briars. A metaphor?
America is in trouble. We need leaders who can cross disciplines and think about our nation and our world in ways that make sense in terms of the laws of nature. After all, there are some laws that cannot be legislated.
Rob Kall is executive editor and publisher of OpEdNews.com, President of Futurehealth, Inc, inventor . He is also published regularly on the Huffingtonpost.com. He is a frequent Speaker on Politics, Impeachment, The art, science and power of story, heroes and the hero's journey, Positive Psychology, Stress, Biofeedback and a wide range of subjects. He is a campaign consultant specializing in tapping the power of stories for issue positioning, stump speeches and debates. He recently retired as organizer of several conferences, including StoryCon, the Summit Meeting on the Art, Science and Application of Story and The Winter Brain Meeting on neurofeedback, biofeedback, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology. See more of his articles here and, older ones, here.
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-While I'm registered as a Democrat, I consider myself to be a dynamic critic of the Democratic party, just as, well, not quite as much, but almost as much as I am a critic of republicans.
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Reminds me of the message of the book, Ishmael, about the "takers."
Means says,
This is what has come to be termed "efficiency" in the European mind. Whatever is mechanical is perfect; whatever seems to work at the moment- that is, proves the mechanical model to be the right one- is considered correct, even when it is clearly untrue. This is why "truth" changes so fast in the European mind; the answers which result from such a process are only stopgaps, only temporary, and must be continuously discarded in favor of new stopgaps which support the mechanical models and keep them (the models) alive.
It is as though these people used the "new" sciences of Newtonian physics, the emerging metaphors of industrial age technologies-- mass production, etc.
And I like what Means says here,
I do not believe that capitalism itself is really responsible for the situation in which American Indians have been declared a national sacrifice. No, it is the European tradition ; European culture itself is responsible. Marxism is just the latest continuation of this tradition, not a solution to it. To ally with Marxism is to ally with the very same forces that declare us an acceptable cost.
There is another way. There is the traditional Lakota way and the ways of the American Indian peoples. It is the way that knows that humans do not have the right to degrade Mother Earth, that there are forces beyond anything the European mind has conceived, that humans must be in harmony with all relations or the relations will eventually eliminate the disharmony. A lopsided emphasis on humans by humans-the Europeans' arrogance of acting as though they were beyond the nature of all related things-can only result in a total disharmony and a readjustment which cuts arrogant humans down to size, gives them a taste of that reality beyond their grasp or control and restores the harmony. There is a need for a revolutionary theory to bring this about; it's beyond human control. The nature peoples of this planet know this and so they do not theorize about it. Theory is an abstract; our knowledge is real.
Distilled to its basic terms, European faith-including the new faith in science-equals a belief that man is God. Europe has always sought a Messiah, whether that be the man Jesus Christ or the man Karl Marx or the man Albert Einstein. American Indians know this to be totally absurd. Humans are the weakest of all creatures, so weak that other creatures are willing to give up their flesh that we may live. Humans are able to survive only through the exercise of rationality since they lack the abilities of other creatures to gain food through the use of fang and claw.
But rationality is a curse since it can cause humans to forget the natural order of things in ways other creatures do not. A wolf never forgets his or her place in the natural order. American Indians can. Europeans almost always do. We pray our thanks to the deer, our relations, for allowing us their flesh to eat; Europeans simply take the flesh for granted and consider the deer inferior. After all, Europeans consider themselves godlike in their rationalism and science. God is the Supreme Being; all else must be inferior.
All European tradition, Marxism included, has conspired to defy the natural order of all things. Mother Earth has been abused, the powers have been abused, and this cannot go on forever. No theory can alter that simple fact. Mother Earth will retaliate, the whole environment will retaliate, and the abusers will be eliminated. Things come full circle, back to where they started. That's revolution. And that's a prophecy of my people, of the Hopi people and of other correct peoples.
American Indians have been trying to explain this to Europeans for centuries. But, as I said earlier, Europeans have proven themselves unable to hear. The natural order will win out, and the offenders will die out, the way deer die when they offend the harmony by over-populating a given region. It's only a matter of time until what Europeans call "a major catastrophe of global proportions" will occur. It is the role of American Indian peoples, the role of all natural beings, to survive. A part of our survival is to resist. We resist not to overthrow a government or to take political power, but because it is natural to resist extermination, to survive. We don't want power over white institutions; we want white institutions to disappear. That's revolution.
American Indians are still in touch with these realities-the prophecies, the traditions of our ancestors. We learn from the elders, from nature, from the powers. And when the catastrophe is over, we American Indian peoples will still be here to inhabit the hemisphere. I don't care if it's only a handful living high in the Andes. American Indian people will survive; harmony will be reestablished. That's revolution.
At this point, perhaps I should be very clear about another matter, one which should already be clear as a result of what I've said. But confusion breeds easily these days, so I want to hammer home this point. When I use the term European, I'm not referring to a skin color or a particular genetic structure. What I'm referring to is a mind-set, a worldview that is a product of the development of European culture. People are not genetically encoded to hold this outlook; they are acculturated to hold it. The same is true for American Indians or for the members of any culture.
Awesome, visionary thinking!
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Rob Kall (749 articles, 3834 quicklinks, 320 diaries, 1613 comments)
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 8:20:59 AM
It's good to remind us that humans beings have limits, are part of the cosmos and cannot bend everything around them to their will.
However, I am always leery when someone refers to ''natural laws''. In the past, natural laws have mostly been an excuse for priviledged classes to justify and perpetuate their oppression of underpriviledged classes.
I do not have the time to elaborate on the old controversy of nature versus nurture. I just want to remind you that, not so long ago, ''natural laws''--the ''natural'' inferiority of certain categories of people--was the key argument to condone discrimination, slavery, colonization, genocide, etc.
When it comes to understanding the workings of human societies, history should make us think twice before accepting such a politically tainted concept as philosophically and scientifically valid.
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francine (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 282 comments)
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 9:22:38 AM
gravity, avogodros, boyles, relativity, carbon based life, etc... not the bullshit you're talking about that uses the eupemism of natural law for social concepts.
When I say bullshit, I don't meant what You are saying, I mean the abuse of the language to frame the abuses you describe as based on science. That's the bullshit.
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Rob Kall (749 articles, 3834 quicklinks, 320 diaries, 1613 comments)
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 2:34:51 PM
Here are a couple of bio-processes you might want to add to the very provocative construct which you have outlined in your article.
Homeostasis – the tendency of an organism to maintain things as they are, within well defined boundaries. The cyclical ascent to control by political parties could easily be explained by the application of this process.
Mutation – We can identify some major changes in global society, which it could very well be explained as societal Mutations. The invention of the printing press, the 19th century Industrial Revolution, harnessing electricity, the invention of the transistor, and most recently the impact of the Internet. What is particularly interesting is the collapsing of time (roughly following Moore’s Law) as new technologies change lives throughout the world at an exponentially increasing rate.
I found it a fascinating read.
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Sherwin Steffin (14 articles, 24 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 81 comments)
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 9:36:09 AM
Francine, you make a very good point. The laws of nature have also been used by humans to slaughter billions of non-human animals with impunity. Often, the same people who make these justifications use religion to assure themselves that they are somehow not part of the natural world, and are entitled to operate without constraints within it. That's why the planet is in the shape it's in, and countless species are extinct: The self-serving, fallacious justifications of the greedy and ignorant Homo Sapien.
It's interesting to notice how the same people who use the natural order storyline to justify racism, specieism, and sexism are the first to deem themselves exempt from natural consequences when it applies to terminally-ill or brain-dead humans. Then you have all manner of extreme, unnatural interventions applied to KEEP nature from running it's course. These people are also apparently obsessed with the protection of human zygotes and blastocysts, insisting that every one of them, no matter how defective, must survive; ignoring the fact that nature itself ends at least 1/3 of human pregnancies before they even get going.
It seems to be a very selective framework for some...
Ms. VB Kitty
The Mills River Progressive
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Anna Van Z (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 7 comments)
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 11:02:29 AM
time and materials. I have a chapter in my book titled Time and Materials.
During the first 4,000 years of recorded mans history (Time) we used few of our global resources (Materials). During the past 100 years (the lifetime of some living humans) we have harvested an estimated 50% of all natural occurring resources.
However, this harvesting was not linear in nature but rather exponential. Demand continued to grow, while resource stocks and land mass remained finite.
There is no reasonable correlation practiced between a growth oriented world (exponential) and a finite landmass and resource base. This is the natural law that will soon rule supreme.
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Mike Folkerth (120 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 562 comments)
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 11:44:02 AM
A very interesting read, including the link to the speech by Russell Means. Many sensible ideas can be suggested by reasoning by analogy, although certain caveats and pitfalls such as contradictory conclusions ought to be suggested as well: the fact that a degree of interdependence is good suggests the Libertarian notion of aloneness is bad, while the notion that overcrowding is bad supports the notion that aloneness is good.
How about groupthink? You mentioned that nature permits variation. That would also seem to suggest that some degree of aloneness is good, because too much interconnectedness can limit variation in thinking and lead to people all thinking the same way, while group survival might actually depend on some variation in thinking, that is, one individual thinking independently and having a good idea that saves the group.
That idea reminded me of a training at an old job, in the methods of Total Quality Management. There was an attempt to show how groups make better decisions than individuals. A lifeboat exercise was conducted with about ten groups of six. Each group had to rank twenty items they had on a lifeboat in order of group survival value.
Surprisingly, only one group correctly identified the top three items on the list: a mirror, a lighter, and a small container of liquid fuel. Water was number four, because if rescuers cannot find survivors in a short time, it is unlikely that water will do them any good. The one group that correctly identified the top three items had a person in it with some survival training, and the group listened to him. I also correctly identified the top three items, but my group wouldn’t listen to me, because I could not cite any specialized survival training to give “authority” to my opinion.
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Paul Rye (6 articles, 1 quicklinks, 13 diaries, 253 comments)
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 3:27:26 PM
your experience is very important. And I think that it illustrates how poorly people in our culture understand how to collaborate. There are very specific reasons why this is a culture wide phenomenon. I have been studying childhood development for the last 10 years and I believe this is one of the most important long term issues that needs to be addressed. the fact that the people in your group did not trust you is an indication of a lack of understanding of how to effectively communicate valuable information. Teaching children how to solve problems in various sized groups by encouraging questioning and exploration effectively eliminates the problem that you encountered. They learn exactly how each childs perspective is valuable and who to rely on in different types of situation. By not avoiding conflict, children learn that different perspectives can be used to test different hypothesis, and this encourages children to take chances with their thinking. They don't have to worry about being "wrong" since they are focused on where results lead not who figured it the answer.
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Tony Duncan (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 22 comments)
on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 at 7:56:36 AM
Hey has anyone seen the movie Last of the Mohican's? Russel Means starred as a chief it was a great movie.
Globalism and Milton Friedman's dream of Big business operating free of any government interference( Except for handouts, subsidies, no bid contracts, tax abatement's and ignoring laws that might hinder profits) will die a natural death and I will explain why. Globalism and free trade are basically a business tactic of moving around the globe to procure the cheapest labor. This is exactly like a farmer who farms with no regard to soil conservation because he can profit more in the short term. he destroys the soil he is farming on( just like destroying wages for the working class) then moves on to a new location and destroys the land there. Eventually he will find he can not grow his crops, Just as the global corporation will find the working class doesn't have the money to purchase the goods they manufacture in China. The workers in China cant afford them either so they are stuck with a warehouse full of goods. Its happening right now and hopefully government will realize they have to nurture those who create the demand for the economy to exist in the first place.
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Gary Denson (2 articles, 0 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 208 comments)
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 4:19:28 PM
The Tao is a simple concept of one essentially cast from the source, to travel (and evolve) through its existence until at long last, it returns to its place of origin, to join the other ones, back to the one. Suggested in this concept is the acceptance of both the individual quality of the casting and the whole in its completed integration.
Mr. Means explanation reminds me of this and of my opinion that Western (European as Mr. Means defines) civilization has never fully understood this concept. As with many Western vs Eastern religions, chaos seems to be attached at the forefront to the survival of the former, whereas the latter regards a similtaneous acceptance of the water, the rock and the river as being essential to each purpose.
Somewhere in my convoluted life I have sensed this acceptance which has caused me to wonder and bang my head about, that if in seperating ourselves from this natural order (and each other) as Mr. Means points out, we have made it damn near impossible to see that by doing just that, we have in fact, created chaos where again, there isn't any.
Your article and Mac's link speaks volumes to an issue that I believe makes pale our daily daitribes from the tops of mountains we claim are essential to our survival both individually and as a collective. I have imagined and thought that it is very likely that in each of our own evolutions, this is one of our lessons.
Speaking as just one ,on my way to the one, perhaps we just like our own bullshit too much to notice.
If I am incorrect and the universe is waiting with baited breath on who our next president will be and who gets the first pick in the NFL draft, then I guess chaos is the way to go. We're good at that.
peace
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mikel paul (8 articles, 1 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 348 comments)
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 5:10:23 PM
Nicely done, Rob. I hadn't realized you were so well grounded.
I just wanted to append something that has to fit somewhere within your purview. In the way that the culture has granted corporations the status of persons, giving them the 'right' to do and be and successfully claim (legally) all that is allowed to true persons under their natural and legally recognized rights, the culture has chosen to overlook one small detail: real persons have to abide by a limited lifetime, as part of Natural Law. Therefore, the corporation's right to live indefinitely is (or should be) invalid. When the right to personhood was allowed to govern corporation law, each one, then and subsequently on the books, should have been given a time-limit of existence.
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Irvthom (6 articles, 2 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 79 comments)
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 10:02:55 PM
Your remarks were good, but as to the globalists going wrong, I don't think so. The U.S. represents only 4.8% of world population. Our exponential growth oriented economic basis has played out. Moving production to low cost countries allows the industrialist to sell their products to the other 95.2% of the folks on earth who are emerging, not regressing such as the U.S.
I didn't say it was right, I just said it was so.
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Mike Folkerth (120 articles, 0 quicklinks, 2 diaries, 562 comments)
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 10:10:40 PM
Rob, thanks for an excellent and very thought provoking article. Here is something that I stumbled across that I think fits into the general thread of ideation here:
Metaphorically speaking, think of how CEOs, large corporations and big money interests distort our behavior by presenting a psychopathic view of the world as the "ideal" towards which others of the species should strive.
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all owners (1 articles, 56 quicklinks, 4 diaries, 140 comments)
on Sunday, January 20, 2008 at 11:01:23 PM
So right, Rob. Here's a comment I posted this morning to an editorial in the NY Times re: overfishing
You humans continue to appall the rest of us. We've been watching your extermination of your life-support (and each other) for centuries. Although the verdict is not final, the evidence indicates that you don't deserve to live on this precious planet. Out of mercy, I remind you that there is no other place for you to go with your present technology and dependence on antique fossil-fuel and rocket propulsion systems. As you might suppose, there is an agreement among the rest of us not to introduce science that might enable you to despoil any other planets in the near future. Sadly, your ethical mores do not demonstrate your intelligence, but your voracious hunger and insecurity. Another reminder: money is social energy, created by those who work. The exploitation of workers is as counterproductive as your over-harvesting of resources. You will soon see the effects of your wasteful practices, but I am not allowed to reveal the sorrow to come. Please, for the reputation of life and intelligence everywhere in the known universe, show some wisdom, understanding and compassion. The rest of us live in harmony with a loving and joyful awareness, while you continue to practice mass murder as a means of victimizing and controlling your small planet. Wise up, Earthlings, while you still have a diminishing opportunity to do so.
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And, to mikel paul re: the TAO--
Lao Tse wrote:
When TAO is lost, Compassion becomes doctrine.
When Compassion is lost, Justice becomes doctrine.
When Justice is lost, Ritual becomes doctrine.
Ritual is the slow loss of loyalty and the beginning of unpri
